On October 19, EWI hosted an industry-wide workshop in Detroit to discuss current technical challenges in materials joining and metal forming. The underlying theme for the workshop was the recently completed NIST-funded Comprehensive Advanced Materials Joining and Forming Technology Roadmap, developed in concert with several joining and forming experts. One objective of the workshop was to gain additional insight from auto industry experts on how relevant the findings from the national roadmap are to current joining and forming needs. A second objective was to identify potential pre-competitive technology development initiatives in joining and forming that would address current needs and provide the U.S. auto industry with new capabilities to enhance productivity, reduce costs, improve reliability and performance, or to achieve other critical business goals.

The workshop was moderated by Tom McGaughy, Jerry Gould and Hyunok Kim of EWI. McGaughy opened the workshop by presenting the background to the national roadmap project, outlined the activities that were carried out to identify cross-industry needs in joining and forming, and then briefly discussed seven joining and forming technical priorities that the roadmap indentified as having significant impact on the global competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing operations, including:

Development of an advanced distortion control weld system

Development of next generation materials formulation and high temperature weld prediction tools

Implementation of advanced measurement, prediction and control technologies in forming processes

Development of practical warm & hot forming technology for aluminum, titanium and nickel alloys and advanced high strength steels

Development of advanced technologies for near net-shape lightweight forgings

Following the background presentations, an open group discussion took place to discuss the roadmap priorities and their relevancy to current automotive challenges. Going forward, EWI seeks to collaborate with the automotive industry on addressing these challenges.

For more information about this initiative, contact Jerry Gould at jgould@ewi.org.